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An Inheritance of Shame
An Inheritance of Shame
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An Inheritance of Shame

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An Inheritance of Shame

Seeing her last night had raked up all those old memories and feelings, and he knew he couldn’t be distracted from his purpose here. So she’d been right; his apology had been, in a sense, an item on his to-do list.

Deal with Lucia and then move on.

Except as he stood there and silently fumed, staring out the window without taking in the view, he knew he wasn’t moving on at all. Seeing Lucia had mired him right back in the past, remembering how he’d been with her. Who he’d been. She’d seen him at his most vulnerable and needy, at his most shaming and pathetic. The thought made his fists clench.

He’d hoped apologising to Lucia would give them both a sense of closure, but he didn’t think it had. At least for him it had only stirred things up even more.

Gazing blindly out the window, he saw the bright blue of her eyes, the determined tilt of her chin. When had she become so strong, so hard? He’d thought, he realised now, that she’d be glad of his apology, grateful for his attention. He’d expected her to trip over herself accepting his grudging sorry.

Instead she’d seemed…indifferent. Uncaring. Hard.

He spun away from the window.

He hated this feeling of restless dissatisfaction that gnawed at him, ate away any sense of achievement he’d had over his recent business successes. He hated the raw emotion he felt about Lucia, an uncomfortable mix of guilt and vulnerability and need. Why couldn’t he just forget about her? Regardless of whether she had accepted his apology or not, at least he’d given it. The matter was done. It should have been, at any rate.

He sat down at the desk, pulled a sheaf of papers towards him, determined not to think of her again. He’d managed not to think of her for seven years; surely an hour or two wouldn’t be difficult.

Yet the minutes ticked by and Angelo just sat there, staring at the papers in front of him without taking in a single word.

CHAPTER THREE

‘FRESH TOWELS ARE needed in the penthouse suite.’

Lucia glanced up from where she’d been stacking laundered linens in one of the supply cupboards.

‘The penthouse suite?’ she repeated, and felt dread—as well as a betraying anticipation—sweep through her. ‘Can’t someone else go?’ She’d been avoiding the penthouse suite or any of the hotel’s public places since her confrontation with Angelo.

She’d seen the speculative, sideways glances when she’d walked out of his office, had heard the whispers fall to a hush when she’d entered the break room. She knew people were wondering, some of them remembering, and she couldn’t stand the thought of any more speculation or shame. She also couldn’t stand the thought of seeing Angelo again, knowing he would look at her as if she were no more than an irritating problem he had to solve. She didn’t have the strength to act indifferent, uncaring. He’d see through her thin facade at some point, and she could bear that least of all.

‘Signor Corretti asked for you in particular,’ Emilia, one of the other chambermaids, returned with a smirk. ‘I wonder what he wants besides the towels?’

Lucia stilled. She knew Emilia from her childhood, knew the other woman had never liked her—had in fact seemed jealous of her, which was ridiculous considering how lonely her life had been since Angelo’s sudden departure. Emilia would certainly relish any gossip Angelo’s personal requests stirred up now. Swallowing, she nodded.

‘Fine.’ And she’d tell Angelo to leave her alone while she was at it. She took a deep breath and reached for several of the velvety soft towels. If Angelo owned the hotel, she’d have to see him again at some point. The more she got used to it, the less it would hurt. She hoped.

Still Lucia couldn’t keep the dread from pooling like acid in her stomach as she headed up the service lift to the top floor, the towels clutched to her chest. Maybe he wouldn’t be there. Maybe he’d put in the request for towels and then gone out…somewhere

Except of course that was ridiculous, if he’d made the request himself. He obviously wanted to see her, was summoning her like a—

No. She wouldn’t think that way.

The lift doors opened directly into the suite, and Lucia took a step into the silent foyer. She couldn’t see or hear Angelo anywhere.

She glanced cautiously towards the living area before she decided to just head for the bathroom, deposit the towels and get out of there as quickly as possible. Taking a deep breath, she hurried down the hall and had her hand on the doorknob of the bathroom when the door swung open and Angelo stood there, dressed only in a pair of dress slacks, his chest bare, droplets of water clinging to his golden skin.

Lucia stood as if rooted to the spot, the towels clutched to her chest, every thought evaporating from her brain. Finally she moistened her lips and managed, ‘You wanted towels—’

‘Towels?’ He frowned, glancing at the towels still clutched against her chest. ‘I didn’t ask for any towels.’

Lucia felt colour rush to her face. ‘You—you didn’t?’ Which meant Emilia had been mistaken—or lying. Had the other maid set her up for more gossip? Now she could whisper to everyone how Lucia had sneaked up to the penthouse suite late at night? Lucia knew what it would look like. And from Angelo’s narrowed gaze, she had a feeling he knew what it looked like too.

Angelo gazed at Lucia, her cheeks touched with colour but her eyes still frustratingly blank. Once he’d been able to see so much clear emotion in those blue, blue eyes of hers. He’d read her so easily because she’d never tried to hide what she felt. How much she felt. He’d taken for granted, he saw now, the hero-worship she’d had for him when they were children. He’d always known it wasn’t real, couldn’t be, and yet he missed it. He missed, if not the childish adoration she’d once had for him, then at least the affection. The regard.

She looked now as if she didn’t care for him at all. As if he were a stranger of no importance. Anger or even hatred would have been easier to accept. It would have been understandable.

But this cold indifference in her eyes—it chilled him. Reminded him of Carlo Corretti’s uncaring stare when he’d confronted the man who had fathered him with the hard truth of his identity.

All you were meant to be was a stain on the sheets.

He couldn’t stand for Lucia to look at him that way, as if he didn’t matter. Didn’t exist.

‘I didn’t order any towels,’ he said again, wondering if she had possibly used it as an excuse to see him. But no—she looked like she’d rather be anywhere else. With anyone else.

‘It must have been a mistake,’ Lucia said stiffly. ‘I’ll go.’

She turned and started down the hall, and some insane impulse had Angelo springing forward, reaching for her wrist. ‘No—’

She stilled, his fingers still wrapped around her wrist. ‘Angelo,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Don’t.’

He could feel the pulse in her wrist hammering hard, and it gratified him. Underneath that cold indifference she felt something. Just as he did. ‘Don’t what?’ he asked softly.

‘Don’t do this,’ she said helplessly. ‘What happened between us is over. I know that. It’s fine.’

‘It is not fine.’

She turned back to him, genuine confusion clouding her eyes to a stormy grey. ‘Why? Why do you ever care what I think or feel?’

‘Because—’ He heard his voice rise in frustration. Because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because when I finally fall asleep at night I dream of your eyes, your mouth, your softness. What would it take to stop thinking about this woman? To get her out of his head completely?

Lucia’s gaze swept over him and then she angled her head away, hiding her face. Her eyes. ‘I must go.’ She turned towards the lift, extended one hand towards the button.

Without thinking about what he was doing Angelo lunged forward, trapped her hand with his against the panel of buttons. ‘Don’t.’

She stilled, and he realised how close he was to her, his body pressing hers against the wall next to the lift. He could feel the heat coming off her lithe, athletic frame, and also the awareness. It coiled and snapped between them like a live wire, an attraction he’d felt—and surrendered to—all those years before. An attraction he still felt now—and with a thrill of satisfaction he knew she felt it too. It wasn’t over.

He lowered his head so his lips brushed the dark softness of her hair, inhaled the clean, warm scent of her.

‘Lucia,’ he murmured, and he felt her tense even more.

‘Let me go, Angelo.’ Her voice trembled and broke on the note of his name and he felt a savage surge of triumph at knowing how affected she was. How attracted.

His lips brushed her hair again and with one hand he drew her own away from the lift button. A shudder wracked her body at his touch, and Angelo felt another thrill surge through him at her blatant response.

He laced his fingers with her own and put his other hand on her shoulder, gently turning her around so her back was against the lift, her body towards him.

He pressed against her and although she remained tense he could still feel her response, her body arching helplessly towards his. This was what he’d wanted all along, he acknowledged with a sudden, primal certainty. This was what he couldn’t forget. What he wouldn’t forget.

And this was how he would finally exorcise himself of her.

She’d lowered her head, her hair sliding in front of her face. He tucked a tendril behind her ear.

‘Don’t—’ she whispered, but the single word ended on a shudder of longing.

‘Don’t what?’ Angelo asked huskily. ‘Don’t touch you, or don’t stop?’ He trailed his fingers down her cheek, let his thumb caress the intoxicating fullness of her lips. Another shudder, and he felt the answering ache inside him. She was so soft. Lips, hair, the curve of her cheek. ‘Don’t kiss you?’ he murmured, and then he did.

Her lips were as sweet and warm as he remembered, and after only a second’s pause they parted beneath his own. He swept his tongue into her mouth’s softness, his hands sliding from her shoulders to her waist and then to her hips, pulling her closer to him, fitting her against his arousal.

Her hands came up to his shoulders, her fingers curling around as she responded to his kiss, her tongue meeting his, her mouth and body accepting him as they had before.

Triumph and something far deeper and needier surged through him. How had he ever lived without this? Without her?

He moved his hand upwards to cup the warm swell of her breast, felt her shuddering response. Then he felt a tear splash onto his cheek and he jerked away as if that single drop had scorched him.

Maledizione, you’re crying?’

Lucia dashed the tear from her face. ‘You think I want this?’ she snapped, her voice choked and yet still filled with furious pride. ‘You think I want a repeat of what happened before? Another one-night stand?’

‘I…’ At a loss, Angelo just shook his head. He’d thought her so hard, so indifferent, yet in that moment it seemed no more than a charade. She couldn’t hide the honest emotion in her eyes, and it was despair. Grief. ‘Lucia…’

‘Don’t.’ Her voice came out clogged and she shook her head. ‘Please don’t, Angelo.’ She turned from him, her whole body trembling, and pressed the button for the lift.

She didn’t say anything else and neither did he as they waited for the lift doors to open. He was still reeling from shock at the naked sorrow that had swamped her eyes when the doors opened and she stepped inside. She didn’t turn around to face him and Angelo felt that familiar pressure build in his chest, throb in his temples. He didn’t want her to go. Not like this—

The doors closed on both of their silence.

He stood there for a moment, his head aching, his heart aching. Damn his heart. Damn hers. Why had she looked so sad? So lost? He’d thought she was strong, hard. Indifferent…yet she hadn’t been indifferent to him in his arms. He’d thought then she felt the same consuming desire and need he felt, not sadness. Grief.

When he’d gazed down at her she’d looked…broken.

He didn’t want to think about why.

He turned from the lift and stalked over to his laptop, pulling it resolutely towards him, determined to forget about Lucia once and for all.

He couldn’t be distracted from his purpose here. He had work to do, more deals to make, more plans to put into motion. Battaglia wanted to meet him and discuss the docklands regeneration project. Luca’s fashion business could be ripe for a hostile takeover. Even Gio and his horses on the other side of the island might show a weakness. The Corretti empire was surely starting to crumble, and he’d be the one to sweep up the pieces.

He was on the cusp, Angelo reminded himself, of having everything he’d ever wanted.

So why now, as ever, did he feel so empty?

CHAPTER FOUR

LUCIA’S LEGS TREMBLED and she sagged against the side of the lift as it plunged downwards, away from Angelo. She could still feel the taste of him on her lips, the strong press of his hard body against hers. Even now desire flowed through her in a molten river, making her sag even more against the wall. Making her even weaker.

For she was weak, so pathetically weak, to still respond to him. To still want him, even though she knew he would never think of her as anything more than—what?

Why had he kissed her? The answer, the only possible answer, was glaringly apparent. Because he knew he could have her—and then walk away. Because he knew that just as before she would take him in her arms, into her body, and then he could leave without so much as an explanation. She was the easy option, just as her mother had been, accepting a man who treated her like dirt. Wanting him, even begging him, back.

She had never wanted to be like that. She still didn’t. She wouldn’t.

Lucia closed her eyes, forced back the sting of tears. Forced back all the emotion, all the useless regret and anger and hurt. At least she’d shown him she was different now…if only just. At least this time she’d been the one to walk away. If only just.

Two hours later, her heart and body aching, she climbed the steps to the tiny apartment she rented over a bar in Caltarione, the small village near the Correttis’ palazzo. She’s grown up in a tiny, terraced house farther down the main street, next to Angelo and his grandparents. She’d thought of leaving the village after Angelo had gone, after she’d endured the bold stares and muttered curses that had accompanied her wherever she went for months after his departure, but she hadn’t.

Perhaps it was stubbornness or maybe just sentimentality, but she wasn’t willing to leave the only place she’d considered home. She wouldn’t be driven out, even if the busy streets of Palermo might offer more anonymity and acceptance.

In any case, the whispers and rumours and sneers had died down in the years since Angelo had left. They’d returned, a little, with him; she recognised the speculative looks Emilia and some of the other housekeeping staff who knew her history had given her in the past week. But she ignored it all, with a determination that had sapped all of her strength.

She certainly didn’t feel like she had any left now. Resisting Angelo had taken everything.

Kicking open the door to her apartment Lucia discarded her sensible shoes and stripped the soiled maid’s uniform from her body. She headed towards the tiny bathroom in the back of the flat and turned the taps on the small, rather dingy tub. She sank onto the edge of the bath and dropped her head in her hands. She felt so unbearably, achingly tired, tired of pretending all the time that she was strong, that she barely cared or remembered about what happened seven years ago. Why had she insisted on this ridiculous charade of indifference? Was it simply out of pride?

But no, she knew it was not as simple a matter as that. She knew this charade was as much for her own benefit as Angelo’s. Some absurd part of her believed, or at least hoped, that if she acted like she didn’t care, she wouldn’t. If she told him it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t.

And yet it did matter. So very much. It had mattered then, and it mattered now. And while she’d convinced herself that he didn’t need to know the truth, maybe she needed him to.

The thought was both novel and frightening. She didn’t want to tell Angelo the truth of their night together, and yet as long as she kept it a secret it festered unhealed inside her soul. What if she lanced that wound, drained it of its poison and power? What if she told Angelo, not for his sake, but for her own?

Would she finally be able to put the whole episode behind her, put Angelo behind her?

If only.

She stayed in the tub until the water had grown cold and then she slipped on a pair of worn trackie bottoms and a T-shirt. After a second’s pause she took an old cardboard box from the dusty top shelf of her wardrobe, brought it out to the sofa in the living room. She didn’t take this box out very often; it felt like picking off the scab of her barely healed soul. She knew it was dangerous weakness to take it out now, when she already felt so raw, yet still she did it, unable to resist remembering.

Carefully she eased the lid off the box and looked at the few treasures inside: a scrapbook of old travel postcards she’d been given from the people whose houses she and her mother had cleaned. She and Angelo had used to make up stories about all the different places they’d travel to one day, the amazing things they would do. A single letter Angelo had written her from New York, when he’d left at eighteen years old. She’d practically memorised its few lines. A lock of hair.

She took the last out now, fingering its silky softness, a tiny curl tied with a bit of thread. She closed her eyes and a single tear tracked down her cheek. It hurt so much to remember, to access that hidden grief she knew she would always carry with her, a leaden weight inside her that never lightened; she had simply learned to limp along under its heaviness.

A sudden, hard rapping on the front door made her still, tense. The only person who ever knocked on her door was the owner of the bar downstairs, an oily man with a sagging paunch who was always making veiled—and not-so-veiled—references to what he thought he knew of her past. She really didn’t feel like dealing with him now.

Another knock sounded, this one even more sharp and insistent.

Drawing a deep breath, Lucia put the box and its contents aside. She wiped the tear from her face and looked through the fogged eyehole in the door, shock slicing straight through her when she saw who it was. No oily landlord, and definitely no paunch.

Angelo raised his hand to knock again and, her own hands shaking, she unlocked the door and opened it.

‘What are you doing here, Angelo?’

His hair was rumpled like he’d driven his fingers carelessly through it, his expression as grim as ever. ‘May I come in?’

She shrugged and moved aside. Angelo stepped across the threshold, his narrowed gaze quickly taking in the small, shabby apartment with her mother’s old three-piece suite and a few framed posters for decoration. It wasn’t much, Lucia certainly knew that, but it was hers and she’d earned it. She didn’t like the way Angelo seemed to sum it up and dismiss it in one judgemental second.

‘What do you want?’ she asked, and heard how ragged her voice sounded. ‘Or do you not even know? Because you keep trying to find me, but God only knows why.’

He turned slowly to face her. ‘God only knows,’ he agreed quietly. ‘Because I don’t.’

‘Then maybe you should just stop.’

‘I can’t.’

She shook her head helplessly, every emotion far too close to the surface, to his scrutiny. ‘Why not?’

‘I…’ He stared at her, his eyes glittering, wild. His lips parted, but no sound came out. Lucia folded her arms, conscious now that she was wearing a thin T-shirt and no bra.

‘Well?’ she managed.

‘Back in my hotel suite,’ Angelo said slowly. ‘At the lift.’ His gaze roved over her, searching. ‘Why did you look at me like that?’

‘Like what?’

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